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OLPC 2.0 — One Laptop Foundation Reboots
Greg Huang writes "In early January, the One Laptop Per Child Foundation laid off half its staff and shed work on the Sugar graphical interface. Now, OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte and president Chuck Kane for the first time detail the foundation's new plans, describe how the XO laptop will do what netbooks can't do, and share their hope to keep working with Sugar developer Walter Bender, who left OLPC last year."
This is significantly more than a simple reboot. The goals of 'OLPC' are entirely different than the plans of this new 'OLPC 2.0' as far as I'm concerned and I imagine it is this way for many others as well. We watched and applauded as OLPC began only to watch in dismay and tears as they project allowed itself to be taken over from within.
There are all kinds of points that could be made here, but I'll let the others bring those up. For me the complete 180 they've done has made me write them off completely as a useless relic of what happens when you completely lose sight of your goal to the point you start to believe the ends justify the means. RIP OLPC.
--bornagainpenguin
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The most vivid example of this philosophy, to me, was Negroponteâ(TM)s comparison of the XO and netbooks. XOs cost about $225 apiece. Netbooks, which are produced by companies like Acer and Lenovo, among others, run about $300 to $450 but offer more memory and graphics power and larger screens. So, one could ask, wonâ(TM)t the normal, cost-curve-squashing evolution of computers obviate what OLPC is trying to do, and more efficiently than a non-profit? Negroponte replies that OLPC is not trying to compete with commercial computer makers but instead asking, "What are the things the normal commercial market wonâ(TM)t be pushing?"
What won't the "normal, cost-curve-squashing evolution of computers" include? Well, I don't see a huge rush by Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and others to include cranks, solar panels, and other alternative charging options to their units. I don't think the "normal commercial market" has decided to go that direction yet. Also, I doubt highly that these same companies will ever make their equipment repairable by children as this would cut into their profit margins too much if they had to stop making computer equipment with proprietary and hard-to-replace components.
The underlying, subconscious goal (in other words, whether they realize it or not) of the OLPC project is to prove that reliable, hardy products don't have to cost a fortune. It's the mentality of the business world today to produce cheap crap that is then sold at a premium in order to finance yacht parties and private jets for the upper echelon of their employee-base. the OLPC is just one of the few outfits out there trying their best to disprove that particular business model.
As long as they don't restrict the product to less developed nations the uptake will happen. It can be argued that OLPC started the netbook category, when ASUS and Intel saw the outpouring of support. If they create a product, allow it to be sold world wide, and the developed nations will create demand and volume for the charity work.
You've preordered it and you're happy? Did you actually receive one also or are you just happy with the specs?
You can already buy eee PC 900A laptops for $200 at BestBuy. Those suckers have 9 inch screens, Atom processors, and a gig of RAM. So who needs this OLPC stuff?
I wonder what effect the OLPC had on the eee PC. If because of the OLPC businesses like Asus start making low cost, and portable, computers then I think OLPC will have done a lot. Now if only Asus would include a similar power supply, pull a cord to generate power.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You can already buy eee PC 900A laptops for $200 at BestBuy. Those suckers have 9 inch screens, Atom processors, and a gig of RAM. So who needs this OLPC stuff?
I think Negroponte said it best:
In the case of netbooks, he says, "You could arguably say we really created the netbook market. But if you look at the netbooks, they really copied the easy part. They didn't copy low power, they didn't copy mesh networks, they didn't copy sunlight-readable displays. All three things are absent from every single netbook."
I've personally used an OLPC before. While I'm not ready to buy one, I'm impressed with just how fine the design and build quality is for its intended purpose.
Seems like Slashdotters get regularly stuck in a mindset of "geez, it wouldn't work for me, therefore it must be crap." There are several billion other people on this planet, a sizeable number of whom might like it just fine.
Silly of me to ask, I know.
They have collocated 1 million machines.
The bloody point of these machines is to require as little infrastructure as possible.
Where they failed is:
- Never trying to harness economies of scale.
- Internal political squabbling (mostly brought by Negroponte and his silly decision to use Windows, thus becoming a collaborator with the expansion of the Windows monopoly).
- The failure to harness the impetus of the FOSS community in order to obviate many of the production costs related to software. The bare minimum to achieve this would be to ensure a free OS is at the core of the project.
Sort out these issues and you will have many takers, even in the poorest countries there are children with access to some infrastructure that would benefit enormously with such a device.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It often seems to me that the engineering was the only thing that OLPC got right. Everything else was like a lesson in how NOT to do it.
Come play free flash games on Kongregate!
I wonder why anyone mods this as insightful. The OLPC was not designed for people who shop at BestBuy. It was designed for children in the third world who often don't have power and rarely have an internet connection. It was designed to be rugged, easily repairable and to be used for years. Netbooks are just the next version of consumer throwaway junk.
"Developing" != "war torn and starving." There are lots of impoverished areas that have food and clean water, just insufficient education. That's where this laptop was aimed at.
I The last thing we need to be sending to people who are starving to death and getting shot by wandering bands of "people's militias" is a damn computer.
Your frequently stated argument is bogus.
I have lived as an expatriate in rural Africa for many years, and have personally known both starvers and shootees. They are a tragic but small minority of the people of Africa. One of the biggest problems facing the education system in the country in which I lived (Ghana) is the expense and unavailability of teaching materials. Rare is the classroom where anyone other than the teacher has a textbook, and frequently even the teacher doesn't have one.
The OLPC project directly addresses this issue, making low cost (free) teaching materials available on the desks of the children.
Delivering education to people addresses many of the underlying issues that cause the starving and shooting.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
I thought this quote from the article was quite scary:
"The Rwandan leader initially ordered 10,000 XOs, then upped it to 100,000. The program now makes up a large fraction of the countryâ(TM)s education budget, according to Negroponte."
I'm all up for the use of computers in a developed world, including the OLPC initiative but considering most of these countries don't have a basic deployment of schools, teachers, books, etc isn't it unwise to spend a "large fraction" of your budget on OLPCs?